As part of JOUEZ @ BIG On Bloor Festival of Arts and Culture, Trinity Square Video recalls the acid cloud that loomed over the Bloor and Lansdowne neighbourhood in early November (2016) and the passing attention it received through different media outlets. The programmed screening speaks to a community’s active and passive reactions to the environmental disaster, and considers social media’s influence in creating hysteria and contorting narratives.

ADL (Rouzbeh Akhbari, Felix Kalmenson, and Ash Moniz) – An Audition For Permanence, 2017 [18:15] Commissioned by the Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing.
An Audition For Permanence is a video installation which positions a tiered grow system as the audience for a series of auditions conducted on a ‘Stage for Cultural Activities’ on the outskirts of Bai Dun Cun. These auditions unpack the competing founding narratives of the valley and the thwarted plan to develop the district as a prefecture level city.

The window of room 8309 at Super8 Hotel on Spadina Ave perfectly frames an unexceptional view – an intersection with a corner coffee shop. There is a Woman Texting in Front of the Dark Horse investigates this site, adding a layer of narrative tension to a nonfictional, photographic depiction of an actual location. A frantic telephone dialogue seems to direct the camera’s gaze as a sense of real-time surveillance is upset by jump cuts and repeated moments, creating a narrative with simultaneously amusing and sinister undertones.

Christina Battle – notes to self, 2014 – ongoing

Notes to Self is an ongoing series of videos documenting a simple, repetitive act as a way to mimic our fleeting engagement with social media status updates.

Ronnie Clarke – let’s hit the floor, 2017 [2:39]

let’s hit the floor draws from translations in language and electronic music culture – an appropriated lyric video for a dance track was projected on carpet, the sounds of my body creating a sort of remix, and my body remixing the visuals in turn.

Eshrat Erfanian – Start Dreaming, 2007 [6:40]

The static camera passively observes the landscape unfold before it, capturing surveillance-like images from the suburb of Toronto (Vaughan) from afar and of pre-World War II housing in Berlin, seen from the neighborly within – STASI-style.

jes sachse – video sequence, 2017 [10:00]

Information coming soon.

Further information about JOUEZ @ BIG On Bloor Festival of Arts and Culture programming can be found here.